Israeli Institute to Get Medieval Bible Fragment

The family of man who held a fragment of a more than 1,000-year-old manuscript of the Hebrew Bible for six decades as a good luck charm will present it to a Jerusalem institute next week, officials said Thursday.

The parchment, about "the size of a credit card," is believed to be part of the most authoritative manuscript of the Hebrew Bible, the Aleppo Codex, said Michael Glatzer, academic secretary of the Yad Ben Zvi institute.

It contains verses from the Book of Exodus describing the plagues in Egypt, including the words of Moses to Pharaoh, "Let my people go, that they may serve me."